The Sweet Taste Of Rejection

Prologue

The Sweet Taste Of Rejection
Nhica Moico
(Edited)

Turn down the lights, turn down the bed 
Turn down these voices inside my head 
Lay down with me, tell me no lies 
Just hold me close, don't patronize - don't patronize me 

Cause I can't make you love me if you don't 
You can't make your heart feel something it won't 
Here in the dark, in these final hours 
I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power 
But you won't, no you won't 
'Cause I can't make you love me, if you don't 

I Can't Make You Love Me, Bonnie Rait/Cover By Adele

 



Prologue

         They say revenge is secretly a monstrous demon that doesn't sate a being. An unsettled score that I can either bring justice too, or take the venom of a past paramour with silence. Submission. The rules of society deem a lady to be merely a caregiver of the children she conceives, that the pain is supposed to be masked a face of falsity and happiness. But the reality is, there is only so much anguish and angst someone can take before it rips their heart from the core, dissecting the raw emotions and replacing it with the feelings that could help me get by.

            


          The truth was though, I was done with being the patsy—the puppet that's twisted around and beaten until it's broken. He was here. I knew it as much as I knew my own delicately. The thought was nauseating due to the pain of the past, but I was finished waiting for some divine intervention that could cure all my problems. He was here. And he was going to pay. And I would devote my entire, soul being, to his destruction. I was no longer the pawn. He was, making the misery I went through more blissful.

  

          Hands trembling slightly as I sipped the elderly, fine wine that waitresses served quietly, I smiled at some benevolent guests that attended the gaudy and glitzy party; admittedly, one I wasn't really comfortable was. Guests past by like portraits in a mosaic museum—eye-catching at first, and then suddenly gone with the breeze. Adam, one of the blessed consequences of my misery, pawed at my leg; hugging it as he growled in irritation. I smiled at him and shook his head. His obsession with getting my attention was he was aggravated or annoyed never ceased to end, but unlike the many times I responded, I continued peering at the guests nonchalantly.

            


        Knitting his palm in mine, I focused my attention back to our acquaintances. I continued sipping the alcohol gingerly, scrunching my nose at its strength. People gently tapped my palms as they conversed amongst themselves, simply out of courtesy and politeness. Adam seemed to shrink and recoil at the grins that were plastered to their faces. Perhaps that's something he inherited from me. The disco ball flashed before my eyes in a brisk yet rapid manner, as if to wake me up from the daze I kept surrendering. Adam didn't seem to fend off any better.

           


            Peeking at the transparent door far by the west, an unpleasant feeling tugged at my stomach; tying it into knots. Jace was going to be here, soon. Facing him, though, seemed more and more difficult as each ticking second past. I closed my eyes, Adam tightening his grip on my sweaty palm as I did. I reminded myself was I here. Chattering and chirpy chattering enveloped me like slow motion; a feeling that faded past me like a dull picture, the thought of Jace still a fresh, open wound. Two years. It'd been two years since I'd last seen him. The strong and sturdy, egoistic Jace who threw me into a pit of merciless, emotional damnation.

           


           I remember my acquaintances Vincent, Ashley, and my family dragging me to my feet as if I had been resurrected from hell.  Naïveté had been a ghost that surrounded me for two solid years, and honestly, I still think it haunts my every waking moment. The fact I was blinded by my magnetic attraction and love for him; the fact rejection was all he could spit back as if it were a talent. Amy, the girl I left behind, was cold as stone. And today, she was a radiant, frothy little confection wearing a spectacularly fitting alabaster gown; one the world wore when it was a dew drop basking in youth.